A scent of ripeness from over a wall. And come to leave the routine road And look for what had made me stall, There sure enough was an apple tree That had eased itself of its summer load, And of all but its trivial foliage free, Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan. For there had been an apple fall As complete as the apple had given man. The ground was one circle of solid red.
May something go always unharvested! May much stay out of our stated plan, Apples or something forgotten and left, So smelling their sweetness would be no theft. ~Robert Frost “Unharvested” from The Collected Poems
Our trees are heavy-laden until the wind comes — the dropping fruit thuds to the ground with such finality, it wakes me in the night and reminds me how far I too have fallen.
“Fall” is just that: nothing remains as it was.
Autumn replays our desire for an apple which smells so sweet, tempts with shiny sheen lures with such color – we fell hard and fast for just one taste.
We ignored the worm hole.
And ended up in a hole ourselves, unharvested, hoping one day for sweetness to return.
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And then there is that day when all around, all around you hear the dropping of the apples, oneby one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there, and then it is three and then it is four and then nine andtwenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofsin the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on thetree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free fromyour hold upon the sky, and drop you down and down. Longbefore you hit the grass you will have forgotten there everwas a tree, or other apples, or a summer, or green grass below, You will fall in darkness… ~Ray Bradbury from Dandelion Wine
But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough And held against the world of hoary grass. It melted, and I let it fall and break. But I was well Upon my way to sleep before it fell, And I could tell What form my dreaming was about to take. For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth. One can see what will trouble This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep. ~Robert Frost from “After Apple-Picking”
I pick up windfall apples to haul down to the barn for a special treat each night for the Haflingers. These are apples that we humans wouldn’t take a second glance at in all our satiety and fussiness, but the Haflingers certainly don’t mind a bruise, or a worm hole or slug trails over apple skin.
I’ve found over the years that our horses must be taught to eat apples–if they have no experience with them, they will bypass them lying in the field and not give them a second look. There simply is not enough odor to make them interesting or appealing–until they are cut in slices that is. Then they become irresistible and no apple is left alone from that point forward.
When I offer a whole apple to a young Haflinger who has never tasted one before, they will sniff it, perhaps roll it on my hand a bit with their lips, but I’ve yet to have one simply bite in and try. If I take the time to cut the apple up, they’ll pick up a section very gingerly, kind of hold it on their tongue and nod their head up and down trying to decide as they taste and test it if they should drop it or chew it, and finally, as they really bite in and the sweetness pours over their tongue, they get this look in their eye that is at once surprised and supremely pleased. The only parallel experience I’ve seen in humans is when you offer a five month old baby his first taste of ice cream on a spoon and at first he tightens his lips against its coldness, but once you slip a little into his mouth, his face screws up a bit and then his eyes get big and sparkly and his mouth rolls the taste around his tongue, savoring that sweet cold creaminess. His mouth immediately pops open for more.
It is the same with apples and horses. Once they have that first taste, they are our slaves forever in search of the next apple.
The Haflinger veteran apple eaters can see me coming with my sweat shirt front pocket stuffed with apples, a “pregnant” belly of fruit, as it were. They offer low nickers when I come up to their stalls and each horse has a different approach to their apple offering.
There is the “bite a little bit at a time” approach, which makes the apple last longer, and tends to be less messy in the long run. There is the “bite it in half” technique which leaves half the apple in your hand as they navigate the other half around their teeth, dripping and frothing sweet apple slobber. Lastly there is the greedy “take the whole thing at once” horse, which is the most challenging way to eat an apple, as it has to be moved back to the molars, and crunched, and then moved around the mouth to chew up the large pieces, and usually half the apple ends up falling to the ground, with all the foam that the juice and saliva create. No matter the technique used, the smell of an apple as it is being chewed by a horse is one of the best smells in the world. I can almost taste the sweetness too when I smell that smell.
What do we do when offered such a sublime gift from Someone’s hand? If it is something we have never experienced before, we possibly walk right by, not recognizing that it is a gift at all, missing the whole point and joy of experiencing what is being offered. How many wonderful opportunities are right under our noses, but we fail to notice, and bypass them because they are unfamiliar?
Perhaps if the Giver really cares enough to “teach” us to accept this gift of sweetness, by preparing it and making it irresistible to us, then we are overwhelmed with the magnitude of the generosity and are transformed by the simple act of receiving.
We must learn to take little bites, savoring each piece one at a time, making it last rather than greedily grab hold of the whole thing, struggling to control it, thereby losing some in the process. Either way, it is a gracious gift, and how we receive it makes all the difference.
AI image created for this post
The tree of life my soul hath seen, Laden with fruit and always green; The trees of nature fruitless be, Compared with Christ the Apple Tree.
His beauty doth all things excel, By faith I know but ne’er can tell The glory which I now can see, In Jesus Christ the Appletree.
For happiness I long have sought, And pleasure dearly I have bought; I missed of all but now I see ‘Tis found in Christ the Appletree.
I’m weary with my former toil – Here I will sit and rest awhile, Under the shadow I will be, Of Jesus Christ the Appletree.
With great delight I’ll make my stay, There’s none shall fright my soul away; Among the sons of men I see There’s none like Christ the Appletree.
I’ll sit and eat this fruit divine, It cheers my heart like spirit’al wine; And now this fruit is sweet to me, That grows on Christ the Appletree.
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive, It keeps my dying faith alive; Which makes my soul in haste to be With Jesus Christ the Appletree.
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O lovely apple! beautifully and completely rotten hardly a contour marred–
perhaps a little shrivelled at the top but that aside perfect in every detail! O lovely
apple! what a deep and suffusing brown mantles that unspoiled surface! No one
has moved you since I placed you on the porch rail a month ago to ripen.
No one. No one! ~William Carlos Williams “Perfection”
When a newspaper posed the question, “What’s Wrong with the World?” the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response:
“Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.“
That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus. ~Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God
I am what’s wrong with the world and so are you.
Not one of us escapes the rottenness that lies not-so-deep beneath our shiny surface. We are full of wormholes, inviting the worms of the world to eat us alive.
One look at the news headlines of the day is enough mar the most perfect surface. No one moves to save us from our over-ripening fate; we sit untouched, withering and shriveling.
We are the problem and the problem is us.
We need rescue by a Savior who is the one good apple among a barrel of contagiously bad apples. We are so tainted, it takes Someone who truly is Perfect to transform us from the inside out, from worm-holes back to wholeness and on to holiness.
May we fall to our knees, grateful, that Christ, who is the Leader of all in His Kingdom, will grant us a grace and sanctuary and perfection we emphatically don’t deserve.
May He retrieve us before the worms (or the hornets) do. We are in this together.
We have met the enemy and he is us. ~Walt Kelly (in the words of Pogo)
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Lord, the time has come. The summer has been so long. Lay your shadows over the sundials and let loose the wind over the fields.
Order the last fruits to fully ripen; give them two more days of southern sun, urge them to perfection and speed the last sweetness into the laden vine.
Those who have no house, will not build one now. Those who are alone will long remain so, they will rise, and read, and write long letters and through the avenues go here and there restlessly wandering, with the leaves drifting down. ~Rainer Maria Rilke “Herbsttag” English translation by Paul Archer from 1902 in the collection Das Buch der Bilder.
First hints of our condition manifest: Spite in the wind, mist-gauze across the moon, Light chill, the spider’s filaments, blanched grass, And two days as warm as the south change nothing at all. A morning comes when you know this cannot end well. Soon it will be no time for gathering in gardens All too soon, my dears, it will be the weather For Brahms quintets, for leaves drifting triste past the windows Of those in their rooms alone for the duration, For whom this is no time to build. Those now alone Are going to remain so through this estranging season Of reading, of writing emails as detailed as letters, Of watching dry leaves grow sodden on empty pavements. Rilke said this in lines that I last read in Edinburgh With my most beautiful aunt in her later age When, many things gone, she remembered those verse in German. ~Peter Davidson “September Castles”
Enter autumn as you would a closing door. Quickly, cautiously. Look for something inside that promises color, but be wary of its cast — a desolate reflection, an indelible tint. ~Pamela Steed Hill “September Pitch”
Summer has packed up, and moved on without bidding adieu or looking back over its shoulder. Cooling winds have carried in darkening clouds. I gaze upward to see and smell the change. Rain has fallen, long overdue, yet there is temptation to bargain for a little more time. Though we needed this good drenching, there are still potatoes to pull from the ground, apples and pears to pick, tomatoes not yet ripened, corn cobs too skinny to pick.
I’m just not ready to wave goodbye to sun-soaked clear skies.
The overhead overcast is heavily burdened with clues of what is coming: earlier dusk, the feel of moisture, the deepening graying hues, the briskness of breezes, the inevitable mud and mold. There is no negotiation possible. I need to steel myself and get ready, wrapping myself in the soft shawl of inevitability.
So autumn advances with the clouds, taking up residence where summer left off. Though there is still clean up of the overabundance left behind, autumn will bring its own unique plans for an exhilarating display of a delicious palette of hues.
Lord, the time has come. The truth is we’ve seen nothing yet.
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First I shake the whole Apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf. ~Martin Luther
The apple is the commonest and yet the most varied and beautiful of fruits… A rose when it blooms, the apple is a rose when it ripens. It pleases every sense to which it can be addressed, the touch, the smell, the sight, the taste; and when it falls in the still October days it pleases the ear [when] down comes the painted sphere with a mellow thump to the earth, towards which it has been nodding so long.
<Dear apple>,I think if I could subsist on you or the like of you, I should never have an intemperate or ignoble thought, never be feverish or despondent. So far as I could absorb or transmute your quality I should be cheerful, continent, equitable, sweet-blooded, long-lived, and should shed warmth and contentment around. ~John Burroughs from The Apple
Lo! Sweetened with the summer light, The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, Drops in a silent autumn night. ~Lord Tennyson from “The Lotos-eaters”
An election day in a free country can seem like a free-for-all, with the most vocal citizens shouting their personal opinions far and wide, whether through letters to the editor, reams of ads arriving in the mailbox or by email, roadside signs and bumperstickers, and, most obnoxious of all, robo-call phone texts at all hours of the day or night. Despite all the promotion of one candidate or negative attacks on an opponent, every voter, even the smallest and meekest, has the opportunity today to have their say, quietly and alone– a pas de deux between the ballot box and them.
This particular free-for-all has now lasted for months. There is nearly a universal desire to just get it done, shaking the electoral apple tree so hard that ripe and bruised and bitter and green all fall to the ground. We then settle in to cope with whatever harvest we have reaped with our votes. Sometimes we get near-perfect fruit; other times we get rotten to the core. All too often there is a worm or two in the mix.
Somehow, we’ve got to cooperate to make palatable sauce from all those apples falling at our feet, trying to pare out and discard what spoils the whole pot.
Some citizens vote down party lines only; the quality of the candidate matters not — as long as they have the right party affiliation and platform. Other citizens turn over every leaf in detailed scrutiny of each candidate’s history and qualifications, voting based primarily on individual characteristics.
Sadly, it can seem like few running for office are worthy choices to represent a country founded on the principles of religious freedom and escape from the tyranny of government in the lives of citizens. We are indeed a confused and far too angry people, divided and divisive, all shaking the American tree for all its worth to see what’s in it for us, threatening the life of the tree itself.
After I complete and seal up my ballot, I pray this election day will be a day when we set the differences aside and work together to make the best applesauce possible, blending all the different viewpoints in a “cheerful, continent, equitable, sweet-blooded, long-lived” mixture, shedding warmth and contentment around for the ultimate good of all.
Now that’ll be the day…
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Through the night the apples outside my window one by one let go their branches and drop to the lawn. I can’t see, but hear the stem-snap, the plummet through leaves, then the final thump against the ground.
Sometimes two at once, or one right after another. During long moments of silence I wait and wonder about the bruised bodies, the terror of diving through air, and think I’ll go tomorrow to find the newly fallen, but they all look alike lying there dewsoaked, disappearing before me.
2.
I lie beneath my window listening to the sound of apples dropping in
the yard, a syncopated code I long to know, which continues even as I sleep, and dream I know
the meaning of what I hear, each dull thud of unseen apple-
body, the earth falling to earth
once and forever, over and over. ~ Li-Young Lee,”Falling: The Code” from Rose
Right outside our bedroom window stand two very ancient Gravenstein apple trees. Despite their age, they continue to produce apples with unparalleled bright and sweet flavor. These aren’t winter “keepers” so must be used quickly, preferably picked before they end up falling to their fate. Still, I rarely get that done before they are let go.
Over the past several weeks, before I fall asleep, I have listened to the trees releasing their hold on their apples, one by one by one. I make a mental note to try to get to the base of the trees first thing in the morning to pick up the “still warm” apple bodies strewn about in the grass underneath, in order to start a pot of applesauce simmering on the stove. Some of the Gravensteins are far too bruised or wormy to bother with, but with a careful eye, I can find the most recent windfalls that are worth peeling and chopping up.
I realize I miss picking up many apples that eventually melt back into the earth from which they originally came, feeding the roots of these old old trees. I think about my own current wobbliness on a branch where I budded, bloomed, and have fruited and wonder when the time will come when I too will be let loose to fall back to dust.
Or maybe, just maybe, I will be picked up and washed off to become part of a truly heavenly pie.
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This is the time of year when so much budding potential has reached the peak of fruitfulness – plums, apples and pears are ready for the table, the oven, the dehydrator and freezer. The cherries had their season weeks ago.
My grandchildren wander the orchard with me, marveling at the bounty that has dropped from its branches, and looking up at what remains to be collected above our heads.
They pick up an apple and take a bite, trying to avoid worm holes and bruises. It seems we always are dodging the daily reality of worms and bruises.
It takes so much to yield bud to blossom to fruit to nourishment and the honeybee is our ticket to preserved winter fruit, making honey in the process. It is a marvelous way that nature is designed to replenish itself and nurture us, year after year.
And to think our fall from the Garden was over one piece of forbidden fruit, especially when there was so much, else available to us.
plum blossomscherry blossoms
Now available: a gift from Barnstorming if you donate $50 to support daily Barnstorming posts – three blank notecards of original art from our farm
art by Anja Lovegren
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I had a profound amazement at the sovereignty of Being becoming a dizzy sensation of tumbling endlessly into the abyss of its mystery; an unbounded joy at being alive, at having been given the chance to live through all I have lived through, and at the fact thateverything has a deep and obvious meaning – this joy formed a strange alliance in me with a vague horror at the inapprehensibility and unattainability of everything I was so close to in that moment, standing at the very “edge of the infinite”;
I was flooded with a sense of ultimate happiness and harmony with the world and with myself, with that moment, with all the moments I could call up, and with everything invisible that lies behind it and has meaning. ~Václav Havel in a letter to his wife
– for Czesław Miłosz
How unattainable life is, it only reveals its features in memory, in nonexistence. How unattainable afternoons, ripe, tumultuous, leaves bursting with sap; swollen fruit, the rustling silks of women who pass on the other side of the street, and the shouts of boys leaving school. Unattainable. The simplest apple inscrutable, round. The crowns of trees shake in warm currents of air. Unattainably distant mountains. Intangible rainbows. Huge cliffs of clouds flowing slowly through the sky. The sumptuous, unattainable afternoon. My life, swirling, unattainable, free. ~Adam Zagajewski, “Fruit” Translated by Renata Gorczyńska and C. K. Williams
Heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller. A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God. ~Celtic saying
Sometimes the abundance in my life is so unbounded, I possibly can’t absorb it all, like an endless feast that far exceeds my hunger.
At times I have no idea how hungry I am until it is laid out before me; I don’t know where to begin.
When I feel myself on that cliff of overwhelm, that thin edge of knowing I can almost reach past the finite to touch the infinite, I realize it is unattainable.
Not now, not yet.
We live in the already but not yet. The all-encompassing I AM is here among us, His Spirit surrounding us with beauty beyond imagining. But we are waiting, wondering, wistful as the kingdom of God is already here and yet to come.
So He offers a glimpse and a taste and it is so very very good.
A new book is available from Barnstorming and can be ordered here:
I stop the car along the pasture edge, gather up bags of corncobs from the back, and get out. Two whistles, one for each, and familiar sounds draw close in darkness— cadence of hoof on hardened bottomland, twinned blowing of air through nostrils curious, flared. They come deepened and muscular movements conjured out of sleep: each small noise and scent heavy with earth, simple beyond communion, beyond the stretched-out hand from which they calmly take corncobs, pulling away as I hold until the mid-points snap. They are careful of my fingers, offering that animal-knowledge, the respect which is due to strangers; and in the night, their mares’ eyes shine, reflecting stars, the entire, outer light of the world here. ~Jane Hirshfield “After Work”from Of Gravity and Angels.
I’ve been picking up windfall apples to haul down to the barn for a special treat each night for the Haflingers. These are apples that we humans wouldn’t take a second glance at in all our satiety and fussiness, but the Haflingers certainly don’t mind a bruise, or a worm hole or slug trails over apple skin.
I’ve found over the years that our horses must be taught to eat apples–if they have no experience with them, they will bypass them lying in the field and not give them a second look. There simply is not enough odor to make them interesting or appealing–until they are cut in slices that is. Then they become irresistible and no apple is left alone from that point forward.
When I offer a whole apple to a young Haflinger who has never tasted one before, they will sniff it, perhaps roll it on my hand a bit with their lips, but I’ve yet to have one simply bite in and try. If I take the time to cut the apple up, they’ll pick up a section very gingerly, kind of hold it on their tongue and nod their head up and down trying to decide as they taste and test it if they should drop it or chew it, and finally, as they really bite in and the sweetness pours over their tongue, they get this look in their eye that is at once surprised and supremely pleased. The only parallel experience I’ve seen in humans is when you offer a five month old baby his first taste of ice cream on a spoon and at first he tightens his lips against its coldness, but once you slip a little into his mouth, his face screws up a bit and then his eyes get big and sparkly and his mouth rolls the taste around his tongue, savoring that sweet cold creaminess. His mouth immediately pops open for more.
It is the same with apples and horses. Once they have that first taste, they are our slaves forever in search of the next apple.
The Haflinger veteran apple eaters can see me coming with my sweat shirt front pocket stuffed with apples, a “pregnant” belly of fruit, as it were. They offer low nickers when I come up to their stalls and each horse has a different approach to their apple offering.
There is the “bite a little bit at a time” approach, which makes the apple last longer, and tends to be less messy in the long run. There is the “bite it in half” technique which leaves half the apple in your hand as they navigate the other half around their teeth, dripping and frothing sweet apple slobber. Lastly there is the greedy “take the whole thing at once” horse, which is the most challenging way to eat an apple, as it has to be moved back to the molars, and crunched, and then moved around the mouth to chew up the large pieces, and usually half the apple ends up falling to the ground, with all the foam that the juice and saliva create. No matter the technique used, the smell of an apple as it is being chewed by a horse is one of the best smells in the world. I can almost taste the sweetness too when I smell that smell.
What do we do when offered such a sublime gift from someone’s hand? If it is something we have never experienced before, we possibly walk right by, not recognizing that it is a gift at all, missing the whole point and joy of experiencing what is being offered. How many wonderful opportunities are right under our noses, but we fail to notice, and bypass them because they are unfamiliar?
Perhaps if the giver really cares enough to “teach” us to accept this communion meal, by preparing it and making it irresistible to us, then we are overwhelmed with the magnitude of the generosity and are transformed by the simple act of receiving.
We must learn to take little bites, savoring each piece one at a time, making it last rather than greedily grab hold of the whole thing, struggling to control it, thereby losing some in the process. Either way, it is a gracious gift, and it is how we receive it that makes all the difference.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. ~Martin Luther
There is big excitement in C block today. On the window sill, in a plastic ice cream cup a little plant is growing. This is all the men want to talk about: how an apple seed germinated in a crack of damp concrete; how they tore open tea bags to collect the leaves, leached them in water, then laid the sprout onto the bed made of Lipton. How this finger of spring dug one delicate root down into the dark fannings and now two small sleeves of green are pushing out from the emerging tip. The men are tipsy with this miracle. Each morning, one by one, they go to the window and check the progress of the struggling plant. All through the day they return to stand over the seedling and whisper. ~Nancy Miller Gomez “Growing Apples”
As a child I was fascinated by the early 1800’s story of John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) who traveled on foot around the eastern United States creating nurseries of apple trees. When our family traveled in Ohio and Pennsylvania in the 1960s, we visited places that claimed to have apple trees planted by John Chapman. I marveled at how one little seed planted in such confident faith had the potential to produce decades of fruit and hope for generations of folk.
My two childhood farms had old apple trees–gravensteins and transparent varieties–good for climbing in and always great as scratching branches and shady snoozing spots for the horses and cows. One had a platform fort where I spent hours sitting munching on apple cores, surveying the fields and enjoying watching the animals standing beneath me, relaxed, napping, chewing cud and swatting flies.
When we bought our farm here in Whatcom County over thirty years ago, there were left a few antique variety apple trees of a once vital orchard. They were aging, with bent and broken branches and hollowed trunks, but still continued to produce fruit, great for baking, sauce, cider and winter storage. We’ve lost a few of the old trees over the years to the wind and elements, though now nearly a century old, the survivors keep providing.
It seems God has accepted I follow my own appleseed trail, so no matter what may happen in my own life, if I’ve planted a seed that takes root, there will be fruit and hope for the future. The Lord Himself continues to plant seeds and words in the midst of a world going to pieces.
Some day fifty years from now, a kid sitting high up in the branches of an apple tree, contemplating life and its meaning, will have an apple to munch and words to chew.
“O the Lord is good to me and so I thank the Lord for giving me the things I need- the sun, the rain, and my appleseeds- the Lord is good to me!”
This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming:
God sees us as we are, loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are. But by His grace, He does not leave us where we are. ~Tim Keller
The tree of life my soul hath seen, Laden with fruit and always green: The trees of nature fruitless be Compared with Christ the apple tree.
His beauty doth all things excel: By faith I know, but ne’er can tell The glory which I now can see In Jesus Christ the apple tree.
For happiness I long have sought, And pleasure dearly I have bought: I missed of all; but now I see Tis found in Christ the apple tree.
I’m weary with my former toil, Here I will sit and rest awhile: Under the shadow I will be, Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive, It keeps my dying faith alive; Which makes my soul in haste to be With Jesus Christ the apple tree.
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